Wash your mouth out, I say.

These are the people employed by book publishers to rewrite what an author actually wrote, on the grounds that language might now offend people in a way that it never used to. The Boss reckons I could smell the sort of words that needed to be changed and do a better job of it — but he doesn’t realise I would take it to the next level.

These sensitivity readers have been causing a fuss lately for running their stern, censorious eyes over Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series, the 21 books that started appearing in 1942 — about the time the children she wrote for were being hammered by German bombs.

As I recall, the most famous member of the Five was Timmy, the dog, who got the other four — Julian, Dick, Anne and George — out of trouble on a regular basis. And looking for trouble seemed to be a habit of the children of the time.

They must have been tough, those kids, because they could handle appalling phases like “shut up”, “don’t be an idiot” and “don’t be an ass”. The sensitivity readers don’t think current-day kids are up to it, so they’ve taken them out. Being a current-day dog, I’m right with them: “shut-up” is no way to address a hound merely asking for his dinner.

The books’ publisher, Hachette, confirmed last week that Enid’s books would continue to be edited to remove “offensive” terms. They’ve had Enid in their sights for a while: the modern versions of an old Blyton favourite, The Faraway Tree, no longer have a Dick and a Fanny — they have a Rick and a Frannie instead.

This makes eminent sense: we must protect children from stumbling on to the delights of a naughty double entendre — and sharing their discovery in whispers to their friends. These days, The Boss grumbles, they can go find truly nasty pornography with a simple query of Google — but we musn’t protect them from that, apparently.

Meanwhile, the people at Puffin Books — publisher of Roald Dahl’s children’s books —backed away from changes to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Augustus Gloop could no longer be “fat” but had to be “enormous”. Words such as “ugly” and “crazy” were also going to be expunged until prominent authors, including Salman Rushdie, derided the changes as “absurd”.

Meanwhile, R.L. Stine, the author of the Goosebumps series — second only to Harry Potter books in popularity — denied ever censoring his own books after learning that his publisher, Scholastic, had altered terms such as “crazy”, “nutcase”, “roly-poly”, and “girl’s stuff” to blander terms.

I applaud it all. If I had my way, “you stupid dog”, “don’t be a pest” and “I’ll brain you if you don’t shut up” would be swiftly added to the list of banned phrases. And replaced by the likes of “sit, please”. Woof!